1 What distinguishes High Performance Manufacturing from the others - An Empirical Reassessment Authors: Ely Laureano Paiva Fundação Getúlio Vargas / EAESP – São Paulo – Brazil Cristiane Biazzin Villar E-mail: cristianevillar@hotmail.com Fundação Getúlio Vargas / EAESP – São Paulo – Brazil Fernando Picasso Fundação Getúlio Vargas / EAESP – São Paulo – Brazil Abstract This manuscript discusses the contemporary performance boundaries of High Performance Manufacturing comparing to the literature established on 1980’s and 1990’s. This global survey- based research explores current drivers of HPM. Counter-intuitively we found a minor influence of cost and location, even though we identify clear different strategies adopted at country level. Keywords: High Performance Manufacturing, cluster analysis INTRODUCTION The performance frontier is moving forward faster than manufactures perceived due to the increasing dynamics of environment (Rosenzweig & Easton, 2010). New technologies and big data availability open unpredictable opportunities faster than manufacturers can identify and learn how to implement them. The velocity, volume, variety and sources of data compose a brand new landscape for decision making (McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 2012). Moreover, recently researchers and practitioners awaken that the idea of over simplifying the process was improperly deployed and caused some hard-to-recover outcomes. Pisano & Shih (2009) shed light to this gap when manufacturers decided to outsource development and manufacturing work to specialists abroad in response of the high demand of focus on core competences and reduce low-value-added activities. Initially companies addressed relative simple projects to India, China, Brazil, East-Europe, and North African countries. But, as time goes by, immediate outcomes were attractive, suppliers were able to assume more complex challenges. Once organizations were still under competitive pressure, manufacturers decided to go further on